Strong Correspondence in Evapotranspiration and Carbon Dioxide Fluxes Between Different Eddy Covariance Systems Enables Quantification of Landscape Heterogeneity in Dryland Fluxes

The eddy covariance method is widely used to investigate fluxes of energy, water, and carbon dioxide at landscape scales, providing important information on how ecological systems function. Flux measurements quantify ecosystem responses environmental perturbations management strategies, including nature-based climate-change mitigation measures. However, due the high cost conventional instrumentation, most studies employ a single system, limiting spatial representation flux footprint. Insufficient replication may be our understanding behavior. To address this limitation, we deployed eight lower-cost in two clusters around Chihuahuan Desert North America for period 2 years. These dryland settings characterized by large temperature variations relatively low represented challenging setting covariance. We found very good closure energy water balance across all (within ±9% unity). correspondence between systems' sensible heat (with concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) ≥0.87), latent (evapotranspiration; CCC ≥ 0.89), useful net exchange ((NEE); with 0.4) daily temporal resolution. Relative systems, low-frequency were higher level random error, particularly NEE fluxes. Lower-cost can enable wider deployment affording better sampling spatiotemporal variability expense greater measurement noise that might certain applications. Replicated observations when addressing gaps existing monitoring critical underrepresented ecosystems measuring areas larger than